


Near and Far

by Fossarian



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Mind Meld, Power Dynamics, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-06 10:04:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13408932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fossarian/pseuds/Fossarian
Summary: Even after Snoke, Rey cannot break the connection that has formed with Kylo Ren.





	1. Chapter 1

Snoke might have been the reason for their initial connection and not, as Rey had supposed (hoped?) some mysterious guidance from the Force, but now that the pathway was open, she couldn’t get Kylo out of her head. It was every night. 

She laid her head on the pillow, she hadn’t even closed her eyes when that voice came to her. His voice. 

_Hey._

Rey grimaced and pushed her fists against her eyes. “Go away!” she shouted. “Get out of my head.” 

Her heart pounded faster and she could hear the pump of blood in her ears. She could, if she listened, almost hear the softest rustle of Kylo’s cloak as he shifted his body. He was sitting upright. In a chair that spun around. She didn’t know how she knew that. 

_I can’t_ , Kylo said. There was silence for a moment and then, flatly, _You said no to me._

Like a child. 

Rey gave up trying to block him out. She didn’t know how. Luke had been horrified at her utter lack of resistance in this area. She didn’t even know what she didn’t know. They had never gotten past the first lesson. 

Because Rey had scared one of the greatest Jedi the universe had ever known. 

She wasn’t aware these thoughts were spinning in her head until Kylo’s voice came back to her. _Stop it_. 

“I can’t,” Rey said, unconsciously echoing Kylo. Tears slid down her cheeks and she didn’t care. She was alone, or as alone as she was going to get tonight. What would the others think if they knew she had this connection? What would Leia think? 

_My mother would think you should be destroyed._

Rey opened her mouth, an instinctive protest on her lips. But something stopped her. The truth, maybe. She was scared of the truth, just as Luke had been. Her tongue slipped out and she tasted the salt in her tears and it made her sick. 

“You have personal experience with that, do you?” Rey said.

 _Oh yes._

She could sense, more than hear, his humor, and yet there was nothing funny about this. 

“You’re lying,” Rey said, more by habit now than because she actually believed it. To her knowledge, Kylo had never lied to her. 

_I don’t have to make up stories about these things. My mother thought I was a monster, my father hated me. Master -_

Here he stopped, to correct himself, Rey thought, and then went on: _Skywalker didn’t want me, either._

Rey could not tell him he was wrong. “They were scared of you,” she said. She wiped her tears away and blinked in the dim starlight glow of her room. If she let her eyes lose focus, she could see, as if through a lens, Kylo sitting in his command chair, a silver pen spinning through his long fingers. He was such darkness, all of him a long line of sadness, confusion, and rage. Of course he was just sitting in the dark, staring off into nothing. Alone. 

Something about him made Rey want to be gentle. He seemed so much younger than her. He had frozen in time, to that moment when he had pulled the world down to his feet. Was he not a child? 

And a man and a killer; dangerous. The rational side of Rey tried to make its point. He was a murderer. 

And yet. And yet she could not stop looking at him through that lens the Force had opened between them. He was all of those things, yes, but oh she had _felt_ him so deeply in that tent, so very much wanting to touch her. If Luke hadn’t panicked - 

_If, if_ , Kylo said, mocking her. _Did you know there’s a place where all of the ‘ifs’ of the world are kept? You saw it in that hole you fell into like a gutter rat._

“I had you,” Rey said, fiercely. “I know I had you there.” 

_A momentary weakness._

Kylo’s voice was that familiar soft deepness, curling its way into Rey’s psyche. Through the lens Rey’s eyes followed the long slope of Kylo’s nose to his frowning mouth, the edges of his black hair that curled about his ears. If she had been sitting in that room with him, she might have tried to touch him again. She might have taken his hand, if he had offered it to her again. Swept back his hair so she could see his eyes. 

The thought frightened her and for the first time she really did try to close Kylo off. Close herself off. Kylo’s head turned, like the snap of a dog when prey moves. 

But his voice was anything but predatory. _Wait,_ he said. _What are you doing?_

“We can’t talk anymore,” Rey said. “Leave me alone. You made your choice and I’ve made mine.” 

Kylo’s mouth turned down, in confusion more than displeasure. Rey could _sense_ his hurt at her reaction, and it made her want to scream and sigh at the same time. You could not possibly treat him with the same assumptions as other people. He must have been kept apart from the others growing up, Rey thought. He never did or said the thing that he should. 

_But we’re the same,_ Kylo said. _You’re supposed to be with me._

“Says who?” Rey said, her derision a little too forced. “You?” 

Kylo was silent. At his lack of response, Rey found herself stretching her senses out, trying to broaden the connection. The last thing anyone would recommend she do. 

“Where are you?” Rey said. 

_As if I would tell you that,_ Kylo snapped. The sudden flare of hostility from him was shocking. Rey flinched back from it, but kept the link open. And so did he. 

“I was just - asking a question,” Rey said, blinking into the dark. She could still see him, and now, if she focused, the red waves of anger coming off of him. Like radiation from a star. It was that quick. From almost-civility to this pulsing hatred. But the feeling wasn’t directed at Rey. It had no target, it simply rushed out of him in all directions. 

“Of course that was a bit stupid,” Rey continued at his silence. “I know you won’t tell me. I don’t want you to, really. How would I explain it to the others?” 

_You would lie._

So simple for him. Kylo was still talking to her but she could tell he was not as interested in her, now. He was too angry. He sat in his chair, his back to the windows that opened out into the wide space. Perhaps he did it so she wouldn’t get a glimpse of any recognizable planets. 

“Luke wasn’t trying to kill you,” Rey said. “He - he told me that he did think of it, for a moment. But he was not going to do it.” 

_Maybe not then,_ Kylo said. _But he would have. They all wanted to do it. They all thought it._ He got up suddenly and started pacing, and Rey thought he looked trapped. She felt his underlying panic, not fear, exactly, but a low buzzing thrum of restless energy that had no outlet. 

His attention was back on her, though, and Rey was ashamed at the tiny flip of pleasure in her stomach. Nobody had ever given her so much thought. So many thoughts. 

“Things can change,” Rey said, but even to her own ears the words felt cheap. She was a peddler in the street selling the trendiest spirit lies to those in need of a believer. She knew nothing. She was, as Kylo had said, nothing. 

“You can change,” Rey said. “Ben -” 

Kylo spun around and screamed, _That’s not my name!_ Rey was knocked backwards onto her own bed, the words rattling in her skull and making her whimper. She broke out into a sweat, her teeth clenched as she tried to fight through wave after wave of pure power and malice that Kylo sent into her small body from light-years away. 

_Say it!_ He stretched out his hand and Rey sensed, through a hazy film of pain, the world dimming around her. It was as if he was sucking the air out of the room, out of her every cell. She was being crushed by his power, it was terrifying and painful. But the scariest part was that it was, in some hypnotic way, seductive as well. She knew that relief and something more tantalizing hovered at the perimeter of Kylo’s torture. All you had to do was give in to it. 

She clutched onto the edge of her bed, the world spinning off its axis. She clenched her eyes shut. Blood rushed in her ears, a hot pool of heat settling low in her stomach. 

Kylo walked across the length of his room, his dark eyes so focused, so unwavering, it took the last of her breath away. _Say it, damn you!_

“Kylo,” Rey gasped. She was hot and the room seemed too small to contain them both, it was like a bathhouse, the air wet and heavy. Kylo’s hand remained outstretched, his power unabated, and Rey twisted on the bed, shouted, “Kylo! Your name is Kylo!” 

And Kylo Ren (not Ben) finally lowered his arm. 

Rey had not realized she was arched off the bed until she felt some of his aura retreat, her hips slamming back down as his hand fell to his side. She could not help the seeping shame at her weakness that began to overtake her. She was still breathing hard. 

_Good_ , Kylo said. 

She should have been frightened at his calmness after such a torrent, but it was strangely soothing to her shattered nerves. She was confused, and had never felt more awake. Every bit of her body felt hyper-sensitive, attuned to the barest whisper. Even the sick twisting tongue of shame coiling around her was flavored with Kylo’s pleasant baritone. 

_You like my voice, don’t you,_ he said slowly, and Rey did not really like the thoughtfulness in that tone, as if he had just figured something out. _Did you want me to touch you like this on the island?_

And Rey felt the barest thread of Kylo’s fingertips on her cheek. She jerked her head away, jumpy and violent. “Stop it,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it!” 

_There’s different kinds of power,_ Kylo said, sounding excited. _I bet Skywalker didn’t tell you that, hm?_

Of course he hadn’t. She waited, expecting Kylo to explain, but he was merely hovering in the distance of her conscious now, watching her. “I know there is the Light and the Dark,” she said, aware of her ignorance and hating Kylo for it. 

_And all the things that dwell within it_ , he said. _Saying yes to me doesn’t make you weak. Or wanting to say yes to me. I could teach you._

That was the exact opposite of what Luke had told her. “I don’t,” Rey said. “I don’t want to say yes to you. How could I?” 

_That’s the question, though, isn’t it? Because you do. I know that now._

He smiled and his pleasure was so pure and bright Rey had to turn her head back to him, to make sure it was really him. His hair was still hanging in his eyes. Didn’t he ever push it back? Rey shook her head, trying to flick Kylo off her thoughts as if he were droplets of rain. 

To Luke, the real sin was not having the darkness in you, it was not minding that it was there. She could still see his horror at her in those blue eyes, the faint edges of disgust creeping into his face. _You didn’t even try to fight it._

She had not dared tell him that the thought had not even occurred to her. The darkness beckoned at her door like a long-lost friend, she had merely gone to answer it. Perhaps Luke had meant to tell her how to resist it. Perhaps she ought to have simply asked for the answer. 

_Come to me._

Rey was unaware of the renewed flow of her tears until Kylo’s voice interjected itself into her mind again. “I can’t,” she said, throwing her arms over her eyes as if that were enough to blot Kylo out. 

_Yes, you can. I won’t hurt you this time. I promise._

Such a boy, she thought, helpless to the feeling. This dangerous desire to be _kind_ to him. She laughed out loud as the tears continued to fall. He thought he could say sorry and all was forgiven, that it was another day and another chance. 

Well, why not? Hadn’t she told him as much? 

As if he already knew the answer, Kylo retreated enough to give her space, and into that space was filled the image of Finn, Rey’s beloved Finn. He was everything clean and good, distilled in the body of a man. Rey believed the Force had left him alone because it knew there was no improving on him. She was glad Finn had someone to care for that was not Rey. He was too good for her, but not for Rose. 

She had nobody that would miss her. The realization was strangely freeing. 

_You’re just a pawn to my mother. A tool,_ Kylo said. _Do you think anybody would care if the Force hadn’t manifested in you?_

“They wouldn’t care,” Rey said, unflinching. It was only the truth. Kylo Ren would always be important. He was the son of a princess and the grandson of the Chosen One. And he had set himself on a path to be greater than either of them. She didn’t even have a last name.  


_I want to see you,_ Kylo said. 

But that was the problem. He did see her and she could no longer tell where Kylo started and Rey ended. “Where?” she whispered. 

Kylo’s happiness wrapped around her like warm, thick ropes. _I’ll show you._

And so he did.


	2. Chapter 2

Ben Solo grew up on the planet Chandrila with a lot of expectations and very little want. It was a beautiful planet of mossy hillys and sea-green waters that readily supplied the people of the cities with fresh-shipped fish and quaint stories from the country. They were in general a pleasant lot, harmonious and hard-working, and if they knew that the dark shadow of Emperor Palpatine had once looked at their planet with an aim towards making them an example, it had faded in the memories of all but the most old and cynical.

Into this world Ben Solo thrived, much like a weed, not because the habitat was suitable to him but because it was simply in his nature to claim whatever he could.  


He was the son of two war heroes, nephew to a third, and the grandson of a dark man that nobody spoke about. He didn’t have any friends. He learned how to read and write from tutors, none of whom stayed long enough to leave much of an impression. He didn’t know, and still didn’t, if the revolving door of teachers in his life was a choice they had made or that of his parent’s. It seemed to him, once he had gained power over the lives of others himself, that isolation was a good way to make sure a boy stayed compliant.

And that, he did later find, was an outcome of his mother’s, Leia Organa Solo, that she had actively sought. Because she was a princess and a great leader he couldn’t tell anyone, if he had ever had anyone, what he really thought of her. What it was really like. His father never talked to him much.

He remembered the exact moment when he understood Han didn’t like him. He had been playing on the roof of the atrium after being told explicitly not to. He liked losing himself in the vast swaths of light that reflected off the pool below him and he had closed his eyes, he must have fallen asleep, and he had woken up to a maid screaming at him and all the fish in the pool dead, floating in the air around him.

Han had come running, and Ben might have only been four but he knew what that look meant in his father’s eyes. It was the first time he had seen it but not the last, and now nobody looked at him any differently.

After that, something good happened, though. His uncle Luke came to visit.

“Hey kid,” he had said, like it had only been a day and not years since he last came.

Luke would give that strange half-smile and push his hand off Ben’s head so roughly Ben would lose balance and almost go flying into a wall. But Ben loved his uncle and his roughness and he would have endured much more than that to go with his uncle whenever he left. Nobody touched him.

“You’re getting big,” Luke said every time he came, appraising Ben with his clear blue eyes.

“Yes,” Ben said, puffing up his chest. He was almost three feet and eleven inches now.

“You’re gonna get bigger, I think,” Luke said. “Like your -”

This was something his uncle Luke did a lot, stopped himself from speaking. Ben was too young at the time to understand why, but later he knew that whenever somebody did this it was because they had been reminded in some way of his grandfather, that Ben had been doing something wrong. But he hadn’t known that, then. He was just proud that he was bigger than all the other boys in the district. Although, maybe, if he’d been smaller, they would have wanted to talk to him…

As the years went Ben’s powers manifested with alarming speed and an unpredictability that frightened even Ben. He had nightmares and stopped sleeping for days at a time, and this only heightened the aggression of the Force, which seemed endless. Luke’s visits became more frequent and less warm. There were no more headbutts. But by now, Ben’s feelings towards his uncle were a lot more ambivalent, as well.

When Ben was thirteen his uncle said something to him he would never forget. Ben was sitting on the stone wall that led out into the courtyard and the tranquil sea that had been artificially built on orders of his most esteemed mother. Why she had wanted the water when she never looked at it was a mystery to Ben. The fish were real, at least.

Luke had appeared beside him with that stealth and agility that always surprised Ben. His uncle was smaller than him, but broad in the shoulders and with a hard glint in his eyes that was never quite concealed by his paternal smiles or the infinite number of treats he snuck Ben under the table. Ben liked reading about history, and since his family was thick in the middle of it, he knew that his uncle was a powerful Jedi and a killer. But you would never guess that about the man, vaguely eccentric as he was, talking about this or that nonsense and never giving you a direct answer to anything. And that was the really scary thing.

“I have a school,” Luke said, staring out into the same placid waters as Ben. “For Jedi.”

“Yes I know,” Ben said.

“Your powers are getting so strong it’s time we did something about it,” Luke said. “I didn’t want to take you when you were so young before, but I think maybe…”

There it was again, that self-censorship. Ben was not in the mood for his uncle’s infrequent bouts of consideration for his feelings.

“Think what?” Ben said. Luke was starting to get that same look in his eyes as Han, like Ben was something strange and unknowable, something to be dealt with.

“Oh nothing,” Luke said breezily. “I was just going to say I don’t like teaching children. But maybe in your case I should have pushed to take you sooner than this. Like you always asked,” he added this last bit with a skirtive glance at Ben, and if Ben were feeling generous he might have interpreted his uncle’s tone as apologetic.

“Well, it’s too late for all that,” Ben said. He had grown his hair out and when he looked down it swept across his face, mercifully sparing him his uncle’s penetrating glances. It was too late and all the bruises had healed. He had stopped thinking his uncle was his rescuer a long time ago.

And then Luke said the thing that Ben would think about for years after.

“Normally I would ask if you really want to be a Jedi,” Luke said. “I like people to be sure. I’m not a kidnapper. But with you - with you I’m not going to ask. You must be taught. You must come with me.”

Ben was not surprised to be told that he did not have a choice in this matter, or any other. He was dangerous and unwanted. It was this option, go with Luke, or other, more permanent solutions would be found for him. So he said yes and they left that wall and the fake ocean, and Ben had not been planning to say goodbye to his mother, but he found out she was on a diplomatic mission and it hadn’t mattered anyway.

“Why are you telling me this?” Rey’s voice interjected into the night, high and frightened.

She stared up at Kylo. He had remained standing for the entirety of their visit, and he paced. He had a habit of walking up and down whatever space he was allowed, jerky, abortive movements of his feet as if he had never figured out how to operate them properly. He had the awkward grace of a colt, and it was only during battle that Rey saw him transform into the sleek machine whose sole purpose was to destroy.

He stopped at her question. “I thought you’d like to know,” he said, sounding a great deal less sure than he had a moment ago. When he had started this terrible tale, much of which Rey suspected was highly abridged.

“I do,” Rey said quickly, as much because it was true as to appease him. “I am just surprised you told me so much so freely.”

Kylo Ren was a breathtakingly large man and Rey was surprised he could so easily fit himself inside their small hut. Outside she could hear the sucking roar of the ocean as it slammed up against the sea bedrock. The island was the place he had chosen to meet her.

After she had seen this was where he wanted to be, she had realized she ought to have known. “Ahch-To,” she murmured. “It sounds like a sneeze!” She smiled at him, trying to lighten the mood and her nerves, but Kylo just stared at her without comprehension.

“It’s the place the first Jedi were created,” he said. “Although Yoda burned the books.”

His scowl darkened his face and the hut felt just that much colder. Rey shivered. She had brought her lightsaber with her, of course, with an indecisive intention to use it which probably would have gotten her killed, had Kylo in fact wanted to kill her. You could not be indifferent in a fight. Right now, however, he seemed to only want to talk. She was surprised he could talk so much.

“Who is Yoda?” she said.

Kylo’s head snapped up and he looked so shocked at her lack of knowledge that Rey felt her cheeks begin to heat.

“But of course you wouldn’t know, I suppose,” he said, almost to himself. Rey hated that he had to almost apologize for her ignorance, to make up excuses when really it was quite natural that she would not know.

“Well, who is he?” she said. She shifted on her padded mat, the effort it took to keep her back erect was beginning to wear on her. Kylo appeared to have endless reserves of energy.

“He’s a great Jedi master,” Kylo said. “And he destroyed the sacred texts with my uncle because he thinks it’s funny.”

“Does he live here, then?” Rey said.

“No, he’s dead,” Kylo said. He waited as if expecting her to ask more questions, and when she did not, he seemed even unhappier. After another march across the dirt floor, Rey felt that if she watched him any longer she would scream.

“Do sit down,” she said. “I know this is a tense situation, but -”

“It’s not tense for me,” he said aggressively. “Is it for you?” He stopped pacing and stared at her.

Taken aback by his reaction, she could not think of what to say. “I, well - yes,” she said, deciding that honesty was the wisest course of action. She was not entirely confident that Kylo was stable.

She sensed in his movements and his thoughts that he was often like this. He reminded her of the fathiers Finn had told her about, forced to run, powerful and fast, and yet chained to the inexplicable whim of their masters. Running in circles until someone freed them.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Kylo snapped.

Rey’s eyes widened. She had not been aware she had been staring at him in any particular way. “How was I looking at you?” she said, trying to remain non-combative. It was hard. It went against her own instincts, and Kylo was openly hostile, evidently seeing no need for a similar restraint.

Kylo waved his hand at her. “Like I’m some - some _project_ ,” he said. “I don’t need saving and I don’t want your fucking pity.”

“I don’t pity -”  


“Yes you do,” Kylo said swiftly, rounding on her. “You’re an idiot. Trying to lie to me, still. I can sense every single thing you think of me. You think I’m lost.”

“Well, what if I do?” Rey said. “Isn’t that why you called me here?” Her hand tightened reflexively on her saber.

She had gone to considerable trouble to get here, after all. Lied to her friends and Leia; stolen a ship. The least he could do was acknowledge that fact.

“Maybe I called you here to trap you,” Kylo said.

Rey allowed a small smile to grace her lips. He apparently couldn’t think of anything else to say to provoke her. “Certainly I thought of that. Was that your intention?”

Kylo glared at her in mutinous rebellion, his hands on his hips. Rey was surprised at the sudden lack of fear she had. Sitting here, looking up at him, the thread that tied them together was so strong she could read him as easily as he could her.

“Sit down,” Rey said softly. “I brought a packet of tea. Do you like tea?”

“No,” Kylo said. He finally sat down, though, right there on the dirt floor in a collapse of long limbs.

“Have you ever had it?”

Kylo blinked at her, his eyes reflecting the flames of the fire between them. “Fix it,” he said.

She got up and went to the pack she had brought with her. When she had slipped away in the night, she had brought with her only a few essentials. Well, tea was essential to her. And she had thought… she had entertained some silly fantasy about this moment. That this, her presence, might somehow bring about a resolution. Perhaps the teas soothing properties might calm him? She would have been wiser to bring alcohol if that was her aim.

Drunk men were scary, though. On Jakku there had been no dearth of drugs and deviance to distract the poor people from their miserable existence. Rey had kept to the outer reaches of the towns, where the men did not go. She had never partaken of the liquors and synthetic substances, not because she was virtuous, but because she was afraid she would like it too much.

“Did you think I would call you here to kill you?” Kylo said, watching her as she emptied a bottle of water into a pot.

Rey took a moment to poke the fire with a char-hardened stick, the action buying her time to think. Had she, really? Did that not make her the idiot he had called her, if she really did think that? And if she did not, why was that? Because of some silly bond brought about by a sadistic tyrant?

“I thought it was a possibility,” she said. “But I don’t think you think like that. You are more of a - a soldier than a politician.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you are impatient.” She smiled at him so he would know not to take offense. He did not return it, as he had not any of the other times. She wasn’t sure he understood she was teasing him.

She took several pinches of tea and placed them into the scrap of mesh she had made into a sifter, pouring the hot water over them until they were fragrant. She loved this process. Tea was expensive, though, at least for her, and so she did not buy it often. The infrequency of the luxury meant that the preparation had taken on almost mystical-like proportions to her.

When she glanced up she was surprised that Kylo was still intent on her. It was unnerving, his interest in her. She wondered if he became this obsessive about everything.

“Here you go,” she said, offering him the first cup. She had always told herself that she would be a wonderful host if she had the opportunity, the guests would get the first of everything. If she ever had a rock to call her own, if she ever had people to invite to it. This hut was Luke’s but, well, he was not going to use it anymore. The thought cast a pall over her thoughts.

Kylo took the cup but did not sip it. Rey sat back on her heels. “It’s not too hot,” she said. Under Kylo’s scrutiny, she felt her cheeks begin to redden again. It was getting too hot in this little space with the two of them.

“Did you like what I did on the ship?” he said. “It was strange, when I was mad at you for calling me that old name. You almost…” He blinked, as if he could not quite believe his own senses, “ _liked_ it. Did you want me to keep doing that?”

“Hurting me? No,” Rey said, immediately wishing she had not come to this wretched island again.

“But you did,” Kylo said with characteristic relentlessness. “I felt it. I felt you.”

Rey twisted her mouth down. Her heart sped up, sending through her veins panicky, stilted bursts of adrenaline. She did not know why she so desperately wanted Kylo to get off this subject. It hardly mattered, did it? What he thought of her?

But as usual, Kylo seemed to know more than her and he was not shy in telling her so. “You want to give in to it,” he said. “But you don’t want to give up your power.”

Rey wished she still had the task of preparing the tea to absorb her. She could not keep staring into the darkness of Kylo’s eyes. She would lose herself there, as she had almost in that tunnel.

“No, you are mistaken,” she said, trying to force calm into her voice. It was as simple as that, and if she stuck to that belief, Kylo would have to accept that at some point. Not all her secrets were for his consumption.

Kylo drew his knees up to his chest, making himself appear ridiculously small. “I was like that once,” he said, quieter now as if he thought she might start beating him. “When you give up everything to someone, you have to make sure it’s the right one.”

Rey was afraid to ask him how he had come by this wisdom. There was so much about him she did not understand. She could not imagine ever willingly kneeling to a deformed creature like Snoke. And yet Kylo had done it and she did not think that, even now, he understood why that was so wrong.

It went beyond a disagreement on principles. Kylo should not have been so twisted by his mentors that he thought the only place he was useful was at the feet of another. She wanted to explain that to him, but she did not know how. It seemed, when she hesitated, quite absurd to tell a prince and Force master that he was really worth more, and here was a desert peasant-girl to tell you so.

So Rey simply said, “Drink your tea.”

He raised the cup to his lips and took a sip. It was a start.


	3. Chapter 3

Rey hadn’t really thought of the ramifications of coming out to Ahch-To. If she had, she probably wouldn’t have done it. But she knew Kylo Ren’s intentions, while hardly pure, were not with an aim towards trapping her as a hostage of the First Order. Whatever else he was, he was a believer in the Force and for him to have gone back on his word in this most sacred of places would have condemned him to a fate that was worse than anything Rey could come up with.

She wasn’t used to asking for permission. Like Poe, she found the rigid strata of military hierarchy a little too cumbersome for her liking. She knew it was necessary for any kind of cohesive military operation to be effective, but it kind of put a cramp in her style.

Did the rules really apply to her, anyway? Rey frowned at the emergence of this less-than-Jedi thought.

But this thing with Kylo, it went beyond this war. She felt it in her fingertips, in the stones beneath her feet. The island wanted them here.

Kylo, if he felt anything similar, gave no sign. He was fast asleep, dreaming the dreams of the guiltless. Hadn’t even taken five minutes for him to pass out. Rey didn’t know if she should find that insulting or not.

She shifted around uneasily on her own little pad. She kept letting her eyes fall shut, only to snap them back open, sure she was going to find Kylo Ren standing over her with his red lightsaber and dark, dark eyes.

This must have been what it was like for him. When Luke stood over him. Except he had not expected his uncle to kill him. Rey, at least, had some idea of Kylo’s more murderous tendencies.

Because they were so close, only a few feet and the dying embers between them, Rey experienced Kylo’s spirit as an almost tangible aspect dwelling beside her. He was at rest, but he was not at peace. If she stretched out her senses she could see, through that lens the Force had opened, his dreams. They were filled with violent explosions of light, screaming, fear; sometimes it was his own, increasingly it was other people’s.

 _He’s a killer,_ her conscience whispered at her. _What are you doing?_

If she was truly dedicated to the Light, was it not her sworn duty to eliminate any threat to it? She rested her cheek against her palm, wishing Luke was here to tell her what to do.

Luke hadn’t killed Kylo. When he could have - maybe when he should have. It had only been a moment, and in that terrible moment, the world had changed forever. Kylo had no one after that. What could Luke have possibly said to change what had happened?

Because the truth was that Luke had looked into Kylo’s future and seen everything that had occurred. He had been _right_. By that reckoning, his hesitation had been the mistake.

Kylo turned in his sleep so that he was facing her, his eyes still closed, that soft, pouting mouth turned down even in rest. He was an attractive man and the darkness he had swathed about himself seemed to only accentuate those features that were the most captivating.

She coud not believe he was sleeping at a time like this. Of course they had both journeyed a long way. But… shouldn’t he be more concerned about his well-being? Rey knew Kylo did not want to kill her - was he really as sure about her intentions?

“Ben,” she whispered.

He didn’t stir. As Rey probed his mind further, she caught snapshot images of Kylo’s world. Kneeling in front of Snoke. Feelings of excitement, fear, pain. Rey could see how Snoke had manipulated Kylo’s weaknesses, with an almost shocking ease. It hadn’t taken much. Little jabs here and there. A remark about Kylo’s performance; a hint that he was perhaps not living up to snuff. Backward compliments. A distant paternalism that Kylo chased after like it was water to a dying man.

His ambition and hunger for power was tied with an almost obsessive need to please and it rolled in a mass of rage that truly seemed otherworldly. It was as if the Darkside had seen a void where a man should have been and had buried itself in Kylo Ren. What _was_ Kylo without his anger?

As Rey explored Kylo’s dreams she was brought up short when her own face appeared before her eyes. She didn’t know where the memory was from. In the dream, Rey was looking up, at Kylo she guessed, and talking to him - pleading, however ineffectually. It had to have been before they fought that last time.

With the image came faint shades of Kylo’s impressions of her. Irritation; a kind of weary tolerance for her words, as though he had heard them all before. A hatred that coiled in on itself as he looked at Rey, curving back towards Kylo before it reached her.

Being in Kylo’s head made Rey feel sad and hopeless. She pulled away, and as she retreated it seemed that something of herself was left there, a bright little flame that winked once and then was extinguished by the hungry dark.

Rey checked Kylo’s face but he was still asleep. Even with all this new information she did not know what to do. Was she supposed to convince him, somehow? “Seduce” him to the Lightside?

She had nothing to offer. Nothing Kylo would want or could not take. His fascination with her was, Rey believed, more evidence of his own demented view of the world. She was just a nobody and when she died they would say that the Force worked in mysterious ways but it wasn’t really surprising that she’d lost, now, was it?

She sat up. She was more awake than ever, she simply could not relax with a Supreme Leader who had gone AWOL lying next to her. Slowly she shifted across the floor until she was kneeling in front of Kylo.

His lightsaber was strapped to his hip, his dominant hand clasped loosely against his thigh. You would think he’d be a light sleeper after what had almost happened with his uncle.

Rey reached out and brushed Kylo’s hair back from his forehead. “Will you wake up?” she whispered. She did not want to startle him into consciousness, that could only lead to violence.

“I’ve been awake,” he said, making Rey jump. His eyes were still closed. She jerked her hand back guiltily.

“What - how?” she said.

His slanting, fox-like eyes opened, looking up at her with an unreadable expression. “I always know when you’re around,” he said simply.

Why did he keep saying things like that? It was irritating how _accepting_ he was of their Force connection. Like it was inevitable that they were meant to be together.

Rey placed her hands on her thighs, embarrassed at having been caught out. “I was just… curious.”

“About what?” Kylo said.

“I should think that was obvious,” she said. At his continued blank stare, she huffed, “I was curious about you, fool.”

“Why?” he said.

Oh, for the love of - “The best way to defeat an enemy is to understand him, isn’t it?” Rey said.

“I guess,” Kylo said, slowly. “It’s not like you read that in any military text. Do you even know how to read?”

“Yes,” Rey snapped.

Undisturbed by her ire, he said, with infuriating calmness, “I’m surprised.”

“We _do_ have libraries on Jakku, you know,” she said, and then wondered why she was defending a shithole she had prayed to get off of one day.

Kylo shifted around so he was lying flat on his back, throwing one arm up under his head. Rey wondered if this open and vulnerable position was some kind of signal, like he was saying, _See how unafraid of you I am_. Or maybe he was just stretching his back. Rey found herself overthinking every word and gesture when it came to Kylo, when normally she was happy to rely on instinct. It had served her well on her home planet.

“Did I wake you?” Rey said, curious at how probing the Force link was.

“Not really,” Kylo said. “I don’t sleep much, anyway.”

“Because Luke tried to kill you in your sleep?”

“I didn’t sleep much before that.” He lifted his eyes away from her face to the stone canopy of their hut. “Although that didn’t help.”

Rey pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “You can’t -” She stopped and then, hoping this was not a huge mistake, plowed on. “You can’t keep looking to the past. Didn’t you say that? Your actions are your own, now. Whatever Luke did, or - or your mother -”

“Please don’t do this right now,” Kylo sighed. His tone was so weighted with weariness, almost defeated, that Rey could not go on. She could not be the ambassador of the Light, not when Kylo sounded like that. She was weak.

“I’m bad and you’re good,” Kylo said. “We don’t have to keep going on about it.”

“Okay,” Rey said helplessly.

As if to reward her, Kylo lifted his hand and took hers, threading their fingers together. The touch strengthened their mental bond and Rey shivered as little jolts of warmth spread from their point of contact. The jolts traveled up her limbs and down her torso, across her throat to her cheeks; then back down again to spread between her thighs.

At the blush that erupted on her face she tried to jerk her hand back, but Kylo locked his hold. There was the smallest, knowing smile on his lips. “Why do you keep fighting it?” he said. “Doesn’t it feel good?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Rey rasped. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”

“Am I?” Kylo chewed on the inner corner of his lip, looking thoughtful. “You don’t even know what that word means.”

The heat he sent through her intensified, taking on a life that pulsated and turned and curled. There was a familiar red tinge at the perimeters of Kylo’s energy as he continued to assault Rey’s senses, a scrim of resentment and anger. When Rey tried to follow its path to the source, it split off into a thousand different fraying threads, each one a memory, a reason why Kylo was who and what he was.

Luke said the Darkside preyed on your fears and your wants. _If it hadn’t been Snoke it would have been someone worse,_ Luke had told her one night outside his hut. Somewhat dismissively, Rey thought. As if it was Kylo’s fault that he had never been equipped with the tools needed to identify predatory men.

“You don’t need to read to understand what manipulation means,” Rey said, determined to prove to Kylo she was not uneducated.

She tried to remain impassive as Kylo’s aura curled around her, promising her delicious things, dark wonders of pleasure and power. It _was_ tempting, she could see that, to just say “fuck it” and give in to the inexorable pull of the tides; to let someone else do the heavy-lifting for once.

“You could fight me if you wanted to,” Kylo said in his soft, deep voice. Reminding her that he really was not doing anything Rey wasn’t permitting him to do.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because Rey didn’t want to fight Kylo. He was not the grand adversary she had imagined herself vanquishing, something hideous and deformed, so outwardly evil as to be all but a foregone conclusion of her triumph. This was a lesson from the Force. The darkness would not have enticed anyone had it not contained beautiful things.

“I’m not attractive,” Kylo said, the thought so strong in Rey’s mind he must have seen it. He said this in the same way he said everything to her, like it was inarguable fact, and nothing to waste your time crying about.

“They say Vader was beautiful before he went to the Darkside,” he went on musingly. “That it turns you ugly.”

His fingers slid down her wrist, stroking up and down the sensitive skin of her inner forearm. Rey watched the movement as if entranced. It was so soothing, she wondered how he had learned this. Had Leia perhaps done this to calm him when he was child?

“It hasn’t turned you ugly,” Rey said.

“That’s because I already am,” Kylo said, his fingers never faltering from those slow, mesmerizing strokes.

Rey remembered how she had called him a monster, trying to get a reaction out of him, when all she had succeeded in doing was becoming one of dozens who had already told him that.

From this, an idea started to form in Rey’s mind. Not entirely Jedi-ish in its inception. If Snoke, with his casual cruelties and benign indifference, had captured Kylo so completely he had destroyed nations in Snoke’s name, what would he do for someone who actually cared about him? Would it really be so bad for Rey to sacrifice a part of her soul for the good of the Resistance?

Rey couldn’t see any reason not to do it when the rewards were staked so high if she succeeded. Her decision made, she saw Kylo sense the change in her.

But he didn’t understand the feeling that came over Rey and she knew he would not recognize it. He had been told many times in his life that he was supposed to be good because everyone else around him was, so each one of his failures were magnified in scale by expectation. And into that hotbed of virtuous conceit had stepped a creature like Snoke, who had told Kylo he could be whatever the hell he felt like he was.

Kylo’s fingers had stopped moving and Rey leaned forward, sensing Kylo beginning to retreat from her mind. She moved without finishing her thought, both to throw Kylo off and because to analyze it would make her lose her nerve.

Bending forward she captured his lips with her own and sent into Kylo’s mind as much happiness as she had known in her life. Her friendship with Finn, the beauty of Ahch-To’s turbulent waters; even her own miserable little dirt planet at twilight, when the sun lowered and everything that dwelled in the light had retreated and the night-things had not yet stirred.

She had never kissed a man before.

She hadn’t known what she expected, either from the kiss or Kylo’s reaction. His mouth felt as soft as hers, but there was the rough graze of stubble against her skin to remind her that this wasn’t the same animal as her.

Kylo’s reaction, like in everything, was explosive. He reached up with both hands, a quick, almost aggressive maneuver that sent a trill of fear through Rey’s spine, her body tensing. But instead of his hands wrapping around her throat or a blow to the head, a motion for his weapon, his fingers entwined through her hair, almost pulling to the point of pain, and he spun her around.

Rey gasped as their lips broke contact and the full weight of his body fell on top of her. His hips settled over her own and she could feel his hardness pressing against her inner thigh. He was like a rubber band that had snapped. He was too big, _too much_ , Rey had underestimated where her decision would take her and now she was facing the reality of it: she was in over her head.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, pulling loose the knotted buns, his lips falling back on hers. He had kissed before, she could tell in the ease with which he took over. She found that she liked that, a certain relief enveloping her as he positioned himself over her, angling her head where he wanted.

He must have done this, all of this, before. Maybe many times. Surely there had been no dearth of women on the _Supremacy_ who would have appreciated Kylo’s long lines? He was a magnet of power and Rey knew that people of all races and persuasions were helpless against that pull.

It was all happening so fast. She felt like she was drowning in a sea of unfamiliar sensations, all of them pleasurable, terrifying.

Kylo lowered his hands to her hips and pulled her forward and the way he just did it, doing as he pleased, shot another wave of jumpy excitement into Rey’s nerves. _He could kill you!_ her rational side squawked at her. But the other side of her that was underneath Kylo Ren simply agreed with a horrifying little thrill. Yes, yes, he could.

But the point was, he was not going to.

Some of what was happening to her, her body seemed to understand instinctively. As Kylo pressed himself into the vee of her legs, she opened them wider to accommodate him and that felt right, that felt exactly as it should. He bent down and kissed her throat, right along her thrumming pulse and she arched and threw her head back to allow him more room to work.

He hummed his approval and she felt the unfolding tendrils of his energy curl into her mind, filling every empty place and lonely thought. She ought to be fighting this. She knew what he was doing, what he wanted. With Kylo, it was like standing on the edge of a cliff. There were only two choices, walk away or jump.

“You do want this,” he said against her throat. “See how it can be? How nice it is?” His hand slid up her shirt and over her bared stomach, skimming so lightly it made her twitch and pant, unsure if she wanted more of his touch or to draw away. She could feel the throbbing tempo of her pulse between her legs, an ache that was only satisfied when she pressed back up against Kylo’s reassuring solidity.

“Say you want it,” he said, a thread of steel lacing his soft tone. His hand ran over her breast, still that light, torturous touch that betrayed Rey to herself. No matter which way she moved he didn’t give her more and she was afraid she would be forced to beg. That she would do it.

She was losing track of why she had started this. Kylo still seemed so masterfully in control and she was barely able to think, let alone try to convince him of anything. Obstinately, she shook her head.

“Why are you lying?” he said. His breath was hot on her skin.

“I - I’m not lying,” she said. “It’s just -” _Too fast._ It was all too fast and she had made a horrible mistake, a gross overestimation of her own capabilities.

Kylo lifted his head and looked at her. Rey reached up and pushed his hair back from his face, wanting a distraction that was pure and liking the silky feel of it. She could smell the warm scent from his clothes and hair, it was like the standard-issue soap they gave to all the military personnel on _Raddus_. It must be the same on his ship.

This small detail sobered her. They were in a war. “Ben,” she said.

“Quit calling me that,” Kylo said. He was frowning at her but there was not that lightspeed violence he had directed at her before when she had dared call him by his sired name.

“You want me to stop?” he said, his voice growing harder by the second. “Fine. All you had to do was say it.”

He pushed off the ground and there was a shocking loss of his heat and weight. “Kylo,” Rey said quickly. She sat up in shock. But it was too late.

Kylo flicked his hand and Rey, unprepared, was sent flying flat on her back again. Pinned there, she watched as Kylo turned his back and walked out of the hut, slamming the little plank door with an ineffectual shudder. At his exit, the hold on her was released and she could sit up.

 _Kylo!_ She sent the thought through their bond, watching as he stamped down the rocky path in an aimless direction, kicking rocks and blowing up the larger ones where they fractured in a hundred pieces into the ocean. For a moment there was no response, nothing but the whistling sting of the wind and the water that roared over the turbulence of Kylo’s thoughts.

 _Don’t go, I’m sorry,_ she said. _Come back and let me make it right._

But her only response was the wind.


	4. Chapter 4

She went looking for him. Of course she went looking for him. Like the idiot he said she was.

She really ought to let him choke on his own self-sabotaging rage. If he wanted to be alone, fine. What was it to her, anyway? There was her ship, she could leave any time.

But leaving somehow felt like more effort than staying, and so she continued her aimless trek. Every now and again she passed a Lanai woman swatting out a fire. Rey didn’t speak Lanai but she could pretty well read hate when she saw it and said, “I’m sorry, it was an accident,” for about the hundredth time on this island.

She didn’t bother using the Force-bond. Kylo had shut her off. Had perhaps shut himself off. Well, if he thought he was giving her a challenge he was in for a surprise. She didn’t need it, for there was only one peaceful place on this rock and Kylo, however much he tried to fight it, would unerringly respond to the call.

So she hiked up to the top and, sure enough, he was sitting with his back to her on the still-smoldering ruins of the tree Luke had so assiduously attended to. As devoted as he had never been to Kylo or any of his other students, cast to the winds of fate or dead at their peer’s hands. It probably had an important name to the Jedi but Rey would forever know it as “the tree.”

She stood behind him, waiting for some acknowledgement of her presence. When this proved to take longer than her patience, she stamped her foot. “How long are you going to give me this silent treatment?”

“I’m not,” he said. His broad shoulders dipped down as he rested his chin on his hand. Rey climbed the final steps and sat down a few feet away on a boulder. The cold seeped through her clothes and made her shiver. What a freak! How long had he been sitting out here in the elements staring at a dead tree?

Rey sighed. “You’re being silly.”

Kylo said nothing this time, and Rey, frustrated and tired, didn’t feel adequately equipped to talk to this man in a way he would understand. She sat, unwilling to give up but unsure where to go from here, staring at the stars for guidance; half-heartedly she tried to connect herself with the outer world of the Force, but she’d never been very adept with meditation. What was it, just close your eyes and think of rainbows?

Kylo glanced at her sidelong. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Rey jumped. “I was just trying to… you know - ‘find my center.’” She wasn’t sure Luke had ever actually used that phrase with her but it sounded like something a Jedi would say.

“By making faces at the moon?”

“I wasn’t making faces!” Rey turned her head so Kylo wouldn’t see the flame of embarrassment on her face. _You need a teacher,_ a memory jibed. Yes, well, her options were somewhat limited now, weren’t they? Thanks to the man now staring at her like she’d just sprouted two heads.

Slayer of Jedi. Kylo Ren _of the Knights of Ren_. The hammer of the First Order and Snoke's right hand. These were just some of the things Rey had heard Kylo called. Before all that he was Ben Solo of the House of Organa-Amidala and the scion of the Skywalkers. He was royalty and he was Force-gifted and everyone in the galaxy knew the heroic deeds of his people - and expected more from him.

What a nightmare.

Rey was suddenly very glad for her nobody status.

“I really don’t like when you do that.”

Rey, wide-eyed and erect in her seat, was not sure she'd ever get used to this connection they had. “Do what?” she said. “What am I doing now?”

Evidently Kylo thought it was too stupid of a question to dignify with a response, for he turned his head from her and if Rey was in any doubt that there was still some of the haughty pride of his mother in him, she wasn’t doubting it any longer. “I’m just trying to understand,” she said. “If I’m doing something that upsets you -”

“Oh God,” he muttered. “ _Do_ stop. I’ve been through this care-and-share routine with people way better at manipulation than you, so please don’t embarrass yourself.”

Well. Rey stared at her hands. She was aware on some level that Kylo’s blunt rhetoric was a heavy-handed way of keeping her distant. Of making her hate him or at least of finding him so difficult as to be a lost cause. But _knowing_ this and sitting here allowing herself to be insulted were two different things, and she was torn between the instinctive reaction to lash out at him with equal pettiness, or take the moral high ground. She knew which one Luke would want her to do.

 _Leave,_ she told her legs. Just get up and walk away from Kylo. Leave him to his sacred ashes.

But her mouth was reluctant to give up control and - “Why are you up here?” Rey said.

Kylo raised and lowered one shoulder. “I thought maybe I’d learn something. But it’s all just…” He let a handful of charred earth fall through his fingers. “There’s nothing here. Maybe there never was.” He looked up at the burned remnants of the tree, giving his head an unconscious little flick to throw off the hair that had fallen into his eyes.

Rey watched him in quiet interest. The Darkside certainly did seem to pick the loveliest ones, didn’t it? She wondered if Kylo was aware of the effect he had on people around him. Not just the intimidation, much of which was a concerted, conscious effort - the mask, his long, black robes, his crossguard saber - but the other things, of which he had no control over.

Perhaps Rey was just a fool and Kylo was everything he appeared to be. But somehow she didn’t think so. There was a haunting air of sadness about him, so strange in a man entering the height of his prime and power, that made her want to be gentler with him than anybody she’d ever been with in the whole universe. Even Finn.

“You’re doing it again.”

Rey made a frustrated noise. “I can’t stop doing it if you won’t tell me what it is.”

Kylo straightened and turned to face her, his long legs stretched out in front of him to take up as much room as possible. He was aggressive when there was no threat, hostile to the point of paranoia, in a way that Rey knew from her own experiences was motivated largely by self-defense. There was in Kylo a mastery of the Force, a lifetime behind it, that Rey had simply not been privy to. And yet she sensed beneath the cool veneer of Jedi teachings and the sterner hand of Snoke a raw, restless power to equal her own.

For it was only a veneer. Rey saw that now.

Kylo tapped the side of his head. “You keep doing this, playing around with things you don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand you,” Rey agreed. “I’m trying to. I think we could avoid a terrible war if we -”

“But I don’t want to avoid a terrible war.”

She was brought up short by this, it felt as though the ground had dropped beneath her feet. Her lips paused in mid-sentence and her face went quite still. Kylo watched her intently.

“Why would I ever want it to end? I only grow stronger with suffering. Mine or yours, it doesn’t matter. I get stronger.”

“Is that why you killed your father?”

The words slipped out of her almost without conscious thought. Now, launched at its target, they flew with deadly accuracy, silencing all other questions that might have been better.

Rey tried to backtrack. “You don’t have to -”

“One of the reasons,” Kylo said before Rey could stop him.

Rey shook her head, wanting to deny it if Kylo wouldn’t. She could not control her own thoughts. They buzzed in a storm of _why_ and _oh he is a monster, what have I done, you can’t save him_ and other less intelligent, animals fears that always shied away from the truth. Beyond that, she couldn’t formulate a cohesive sentence or command her legs to move.

And still he simply watched her, this odd little smile on his face as if to say, _Run along now._

But she was a survivor and on Jakku you didn’t have the luxury of giving up. She leveled her eyes at him, she would not run. After all, he was doing nothing but what he always did - using violence and intimidation to get what he wanted. She was playing right into his hand. He fed her some overblown caricature of his own loathsomeness, she flattered herself a vehicle of his salvation, and nothing changed between them except the rift grew wider.

She stared at the scar on his face. Did it still hurt, she wondered? Probably not. He must have many scars, some even deeper.

“Is that true?” she said quietly. “You get more power from hurting people?”

Kylo blinked, seemingly thrown off by this academic question. “Sometimes,” he said slowly. “Depends on the circumstances. If I’m - if I think I can handle it.”

He was using euphemisms, which pricked her curiosity. He didn’t do that. He spoke boldly, even rudely, but always with the cold ring of truth.

He either didn’t want her to know or didn’t know how to explain it. She remembered how he’d hit himself in the forest. Over and over, so hard it had dyed the snow red. She’d never been so frightened of anyone in her life.

“Oh,” she said, for she had no way of telling Kylo he was wrong. Luke hadn’t explained these matters to her.

“Like I said” - he leaned forward on his knees, his eyes still watching her - “you’re ignorant in this way, you don’t know shit.”

“I knew enough to put you down,” she said with a defiant little tilt of her head.

One corner of his mouth quirked. “I was fucked up,” he said mildly. “You’ll never see me like that again.”

Rey certainly hoped not.

She leaned forward, mimicking his position. “You can come back, you know. Any time. It’s never too late.” She didn’t know why she was whispering, it just was that Kylo reminded her of a wild animal and she didn’t want to make any sudden movements unless she was committed to the consequences.

Kylo waved away her words like flies. “I’ve done too much, I’ve gone too far,” he said. He seemed to be talking to himself. “I won’t go back to who I was. That kid almost got killed because he trusted the wrong person.”

“But,” Rey said, even quieter but with so much _need_ to make him understand it was hard to sit still, to not take him by the arms and shake the sense into him. “But even Vader turned to the Light at the end! And he is your idol, is he not? Do you truly believe your grandfather wants you on this path?”

“I think of the two of us I know more about his intentions than you do,” Kylo said and stood up, imperious as any young emperor. “This conversation bores me. There’s nothing you can offer that would make me -”

“I have myself.”

They both went still. Rey hadn’t known she was going to say it until she heard her own voice, and now it was all on the table. She truly didn’t have anything left to tempt him. Her heart hopscotched in her chest, a strange rushing in her ears. It felt like the hardest thing she’d ever had to do was look at Kylo’s face in that moment. She was sure he was going to laugh and she swore that this, too, she could survive.

But when she looked he was not laughing. He did not seem to find it funny at all. Never very concerned with the inner workings of the male mind, Rey was for the first time confronted with a complex man and she couldn’t decipher the interplay of emotions flickering in his expression.

There was triumph, yes, she could see it, savage and bright in his eyes, but she also saw other things that somewhat diminished whatever feelings of elation Kylo might feel at her declaration. She thought about trying their Force-bond, but she was afraid of what she’d see.

“You don’t even know what you’re saying,” Kylo said, but it sounded like a test. Like he wanted to see what Rey would say, to tell him he was wrong.

“Y - yes, I do,” Rey said. She swallowed around her suddenly dry mouth. Oh why wouldn’t her heart stop that awful bumpy drumming in her chest? She couldn’t think, she felt sick, she felt - excited. There was still time to take it back, he was practically throwing the door open for her to walk out of. She sat there and watched the opportunity get smaller and smaller, until it was nothing but a tiny dot in the distance.

“I do know.” She found strength in having only one option left. “It could be a - we could come up with some kind of arrangement.” Her mind was fuzzy with the logistics of the whole thing.

Kylo took one hand from his hip and ran it through his hair. He _wanted_ to say yes, she could tell. So why didn’t he? Perhaps… perhaps she had overestimated his interest in her. The idea froze her to the spot. If he was stalling, it could be because he was trying to think of a way to let her down without damaging diplomatic relations, and not, as Rey had supposed, considering the practicalities of taking her here or down in the hut. Or maybe his ship was better? Rey was beginning to think this wasn’t the turn of his thoughts at all.

“So we’d have, what, an ‘arrangement’ like I had with Snoke?”

Rey was thrown into utter confusion. Snoke? Why was he bringing up that nasty creature at a time like this?

“Snoke?” she said blankly. “What’s he got to do with -”

“It’s the same,” Kylo said, that harsh, slightly erratic edge Rey recognized from battle creeping into his tone. “You want to give yourself to me in exchange for something _you_ want.”

She hadn’t exactly imagined it being so clinical. But she supposed he was correct in the starkest definitions. She tucked an errant strand of her hair behind her ear and looked up at him. “You’re mad at me,” she said, frowning. She had been ready for him to deny her, she hadn’t anticipated this almost insulted reaction from him.

“It wouldn’t be like Snoke, I’m sure,” she said carefully. “You’re not him.”

She watched as he began to pace in front of her. His shoulders were a rigid line of black and Rey felt sorry that she’d caused him this level of distress when really she’d thought this would be a boon for him. And in this way she could save her friends. What did her life matter against so many others, much more important to the Republic than she?

Everyone got what they wanted.

“Kylo?” she said. “If you don’t want to do it, it’s fine. I just thought it was something you would… like.” She finished this last part in a hush, feeling foolish now. After all, she was just a scavenger girl and a dusty desert rat, as Kylo and many before him had said.

“It _is_ something I would like,” Kylo said, his back still to her. “You don’t know what you’re offering because you don’t know anything.”

Rey thought that was hardly fair or accurate. She _did_ know her letters and had more than a passing amateur knowledge of ship engineering. She was in the process of learning the ways of the Force. Just because she hadn’t been privileged enough to be tutored by the greatest minds of the galaxy didn’t mean she was completely without merits. And she certainly understood that he wanted her.

“Well then,” Rey began in confusion, “what’s the problem -”

“Quiet,” Kylo snapped. And to Rey’s dismay he went on, “This was a mistake, you were right. I am leaving and I’ll shut it off and we don’t have to see each other ever again.” It was like he wasn’t even talking to her.

Rey leaped to her feet. “Shut it off?” she repeated. “You mean the link? But that’s - how are you going to do that?” She did not add she wasn’t sure he _should_ be doing that. Wasn’t he the one who kept insisting they were “supposed to be” together?

He started to walk away from her and Rey grabbed his arm. This was simply not how it could end. Not even an explanation or one final affront to justify this sudden desire Kylo had to get away from her. It was like… like her parents leaving. They just up and went and left Rey to figure out the whys and how-could-yous.

“Why are you doing this?” Rey stopped in his path, uncaring that he towered over her or that he was angry and that things in Kylo’s way tended to get obliterated.

Her fingers dug into the tough weave of his jacket. “You don’t want to do this,” she said, reading it in his eyes, in the tense muscle of his jaw. “Why are you trying to leave?”

Kylo closed his hand over hers, and Rey was ready for him to fling it off, shove her away. She tensed her body in preparation. But he just rested his hand on hers as if liking the weight of it there. She plucked at his jacket, disturbed, his mind seemed very far away.

“Do you remember what I said about pain?” he said and she nodded numbly. “That’s why.” And he took her hand and maybe Rey was just imagining the way his thumb seemed to caress her pulse, lingering over the lines of her palm. She shivered, and watched as if this body were not hers, as if she were a passenger, as he brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. Then he let her go and continued on his way.

“You’ll find that when I leave, you never wanted to make such a deal anyway,” he threw over his shoulder, like it was nothing to him. Like she was nothing.

But Kylo was not a prophet, and Rey knew he was wrong. Not her.


End file.
